Terrain Mat part Three

Part Three you say?  I previously posted a Part One, and then Part Two was buried in my Christmas/New Years post.

To recap, my wife found an old Ikea painting for free, and after quite a while I got the go-ahead to make it into a terrain mat.  In Part One my children helped with the initial smearing of caulk and spreading of flocks and static grasses.

In part two, I fixed some areas where the caulk had come off, and spread the caulk+ coffee for the road, and the caulk for the river, and then scattered some model railroad ballast.

In Part Three I worked on the mat by myself, as everyone else was doing their own outside art projects.

I first got out some green ink and future, and made  up a wash for the river bed.  This used up a lot of paint, and I think it turned out to be too green, but it should be fine under the clear caulk.

Second, I painted over all the bare portions of the mat.  Some of them came from places that the flock did not stick to the caulk, but rather more were where the caulk itself did not stick.  Very concerning.

Anyway, the paint seems a bit light to me, so I might go back and hit those with a brown wash, or alternatively plant some tufts there.

After that I got out an old spray bottle head, and a Starbucks coffee cup and made a rather cheap spray bottle for applying watered down PVA to the flock.  I had to make up a bunch of loads of the mix, so hopefully it helps keep the flock on.

Terrain mat as it looked on Sunday

Next time I expect to apply the clear caulk, and maybe get a cheap can of mat sealer for the flock issue.

Happy Christmas/New Year

Happy Christmas and Happy New year to you all.

I hope Santa/Krampus/Your Paypal account brought you what you wanted this year.

I have been rather busy for the last month, with a conference in Chicago, being sick for a week, and then taking nearly two weeks off from work to be with the kids.

For Christmas this year, I, er Santa, got everyone in the household miniatures from Reaper for their stocking.  Reaper, as is usual for the season, was running a few promotions, so I got a few extra things too:

Reaper Christmas 2019

Specifically, in addition to free shipping, I got a free miniature of the month (Genie coming out of a lamp), a free pack of holiday figures (I selected the Christmas familiars because my wife loves polar bears), and a Christmas Sampler pack.

Candy and miniatures (plus paint and an ornament)

The sampler pack I, er, we got had a Santa miniature, an ornament, two paints, three bones figures, and some candy!

For Christmas, I did unexpectedly well, and got the D&D Essentials set from my sister, and some X-wing stuff from my Wife.  She also got me a subscription to White Dwarf, although that will not show up for a while.  Santa also got a number of Reaper figures to stuff into my stocking.

Somewhat unexpectedly, my son got First Strike, the miniature starter for 8th edition Warhammer 40k from his grandmother, so there has been a lot of talk about Warhammer in the house lately!  He has already read the books, and Christmas morning clipped the figures out and put them together.  Finishing the miniature assembly and playing through the starter missions are in our near future.

Pleased as punch

Boxing day I had a hour or so to work on the terrain mat with my daughter, and we got the roads done, the river bottom painted with its first couple coats, and some rocks added to the ford.

It is really coming along nicely now, and I anticipating it being done with a couple more sessions.  Mainly, I want to glaze some green on the river, and then layer in some clear caulk. Unfortunately the flock is not sticking to the canvas/caulk quite as much as I anticipated, so I am going to have to paint it with a coat of watered down PVA.  In the picture above the regular flock clumps you can see in the lower left are where I was adding another layer of caulk/flock to try and fill in some empty areas where the flock had rubbed off. 

We got away to my Wife's cousins' house for New Years, and in addition to playing a ton of Code Names and In the Bag, we managed another game of Risk Legacy. Unusually, I nearly won, and was back stabbed by those that encouraged me to make some board spanning moves.  Such is Risk!

Finally, at the cousins' house I finally got the chance to use the D&D miniatures that I gave the kids in 2017, and then had to contend with them begging me to play more D&D for the rest of the trip. (and they even were trying to figure out how to play together over facetime!)  First session they asked if they could fight each other, and then split the party after the first encounter...  The kids seemed to have a great time, and it was one of the only things that could drag them away from the Switch they got.